Malcolm Noonan (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. Déanaim comhghairdeas leis. I wish the Minister of State all the very best in his tenure. He has a very exciting portfolio but, no doubt, an incredibly challenging one as well. As Senators said, these extreme weather events we are witnessing are now becoming the norm. It was shown in a lot of climate modelling over recent years that this would be the case, whether in the form of flooding, heat storm events or large rainfall dumps in urban areas, which are the cause of many of these flooding events. Much of this is created historically by poor spatial planning, poor urban planning, hard-surfacing of areas, changes in agricultural use and change in land use. We are also witnessing significant signs of coastal erosion and rising sea levels. All of these issues coupled together are causing significant challenges for communities throughout the country. Noting the very good work that was done with the CFRAM modelling and the OPW's approach, that is to be commended on pointing a way forward. While these hard-engineering solutions are important and play a significant role, and Kilkenny city has certainly benefited from a very good and effective flood relief scheme over recent years, we do have to look to nature as well and at the opportunities it can provide us in the interim, because we are talking about schemes that could take ten or 11 years to come to fruition. In the interim, there are opportunities we should be giving consideration to in trying to address some of the challenges communities are facing.

A public consultation was opened by the Department of housing in respect of heavily modified water bodies, which is to feed into the third cycle of the river basin management plan. These are water bodies whose physical characteristics have been modified by engineering works, power generation, water supply, flood defences or arterial drainage. They are formally designated by the Minister for housing as part of the river basin management plan. There are currently 467 candidate water bodies, which is a huge step up from the 33 bodies in the first cycle of the plan a number of years ago. The plan looks at the ecological potential objective of these water bodies, rather than their ecological status. That ecological potential objective recognises the modifications that are potentially impacting on good water status. This could relate to the migration or passage of fish along free-flowing rivers. These are targets we have set under the water action plan, which I launched in Kilkenny last year. The work that is ongoing in relation to the national nature restoration plan is, again, hugely important work that will require a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach. In looking at these, if we look at the multiple benefits nature restoration could provide in alleviating flooding in our communities, it is very important that the OPW, in conjunction with all Departments, give consideration to it.

In the water action plan, a commitment was given by the OPW to reviewing the Arterial Drainage Act, and that commitment should be met by this Government. It is hugely important. Of the 467 candidate water bodies I mentioned under the heavily modified water bodies proposal, 325 are based around arterial drainage. The Arterial Drainage Act, at the time it was brought into effect, was largely a labour activation measure for rural Ireland. However, it has caused significant problems with land drainage and in many ways, it continues to contribute to some of the challenges we are facing with flooding up and down the country. That review is vital. Moreover, in the context of the water action plan and the objective of the nature restoration plan, establishing more and more free-flowing rivers and removing barriers to fish passage will be beneficial. We have heard talk of dredging, but that is not the solution because the rivers just continue to silt up. It is very important that we look at the collaborative actions around the various plans and proposals from the OPW to the water unit in the Department of housing, the EPA, the Department of agriculture and all the agencies working together to try and achieve these objectives.

Added to that, in our urban areas it is critical that we look at good urban planning and design, including the upskilling of local authority engineers and planners to look at fewer hard-surface car parks and more permeable paving, rain gardens and tree planting. These are nature-based solutions. Some years ago, they were probably seen as a little bit out there but there are some really good projects in Dublin and Cobh, County Cork, which I visited as well, where they are using nature-based solutions in urban areas to attenuate water and slow it down. That effort to slow down water and its lag time can have a beneficial impact, particularly in cases of the dumping of large quantities of rainfall in short periods. We are dealing with very short events at times in many of our urban areas, as some of the other Senators have raised, and we need to look towards that.

We also need to look towards the nature restoration plan and the opportunities it provides for the restoration of habitats, native woodlands, wet woodlands, peatlands and rivers. All of this can have a positive impact in holding water back, managing rainfall and working with nature. There are objections under LULUCF, or land use, land-use change and forestry, which, again, are largely climate objectives but they will have co-benefits in nature restoration and water management. All these measures will have a lower cost than some of the hard-engineering solutions and they can be done right now as we wait for a lot of these schemes to come onboard. It is really important that we look at them. I urge the Minister of State to work with his Government colleagues to look at the opportunities that are there under the water action plan and to initiate that review of the Arterial Drainage Act as a matter of urgency. It is really important that that Act be reviewed. We need to look at the opportunity the nature restoration plan can bring to us.

There is a climate nature fund of €3.15 billion and the Government still has not published how it is going to spend that money. That is going to be very important as communities, farm organisations and all of us work collaboratively to try to address these issues. Concrete on its own will not address the challenges we are facing. As we have all witnessed, the weather events that are taking place up and down the country are unprecedented, but they are with us and are going to stay with us. It is up to us all to work collaboratively to try to address these events, and nature can play a significant role in helping us.